Spotlight: Dutch public services facing huge task of dealing with refugee influx

With about 50,000 to 60,000 new arrivals of refugees by the end of this year, the Dutch public services announced Monday that they are working together to make sure that all steps from registration to eventual repatriation or permit granting proceed safely and smoothly.

Though the peak of 4,200 refugees entering the country per week has dropped to a stable number of around 1,700 to 1,800 per week, the waiting time for the general asylum procedure has risen from several weeks to five to six months, according to the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND), which is responsible for assessing asylum applications in the Netherlands.

The crucial phase of the application process lies in the first days after arrival. Through identification, interviews and question lists, the IND will distinguish whether people are a risk for the Dutch society and whether they have committed war crimes in their country of origin, which would mean that they do not have the right to be granted asylum.

"The IND has taken several measures in the last few months to be able to process the new influx of asylum applications, such as working seven days a week instead of five, working on more locations, and hiring 300 to 500 extra employees," announced Rob van Lint, chief director of the IND at a press briefing organized by the Ministry of Security and Justice.

In cooperation with the IND, the Department for Foreign Nationals, Identification and Human Trafficking (AVIM) of the Dutch police is responsible for the identification of refugees, one of the first steps in the asylum application procedure. Max Daniel, general commander of the National Staff for Large-scale Special Action (NSGBO) of the Dutch police, admitted that the identification process, based on provided documentation and data, has become more difficult and less effective.

"Before, people would arrive at the country's only central reception location with all their belongings, where the police could immediately check their luggage and data-carriers. Recently, six new locations for the identification process have been put into service. Refugees will not be carrying their luggage when they go there and the police cannot be sure whether they have all their data carriers with them. It is therefore no longer possible to check everything," Daniel said.

In order to verify the situation of an asylum seeker, the police also depend on signals coming to them after the identification process, such as a signal from other institutions. Information from other refugees about other residents of their shelter can also be important.

"We are currently establishing mobile teams which, when there is the suspicion that something is wrong, can go to a location directly and do in-depth research into the background," said Daniel.

All this extra work demands a big deployment of capacity. For the six extra identification locations, 500 extra people have been deployed. Besides, 600 extra personnel are employed for surveillance and other related work. Furthermore, the Dutch national police and military police together will allocate 40 to 50 people to make up the mobile teams.

The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) is responsible for shelter and guidance of asylum applicants during the asylum procedure. "It is currently very busy in the shelters, as weekly between 1,000 and 4,000 people arrive," said Gerard Bakker, chairman of the COA. According to him, 3,000 people of the organization work around the clock to take care of the asylum seekers.

"It is quite a challenge to accommodate the current amount of 45,000 refugees living in our shelters, not only for the organization, but also for the Dutch society, and to be honest, it is a challenge for Europe," Bakker added.

The Netherlands is divided into 25 safety regions, each responsible for its own fire brigades, emergency responses, crisis management and medical assistance. The COA has requested the safety regions to create extra places to accommodate refugees before the end of the year. The COA also asked the councils of all the Dutch provinces (12 in total) to create extra places as well.

At the beginning of 2015, COA made a plan to create at least 10,000 extra places. They actually succeeded in doing so, but this number has now proven insufficient -- they were in no way prepared for nor expecting the influx of up to 4,200 new refugees per week, according to Bakker.

The atmosphere in the existing shelters is quite well and people live together in peace, according to Bakker. However, NSGBO's Max Daniel said he is worried that letting this target group of refugees stay in this kind of shelter locations for much longer, with big groups of young people together, can lead to much more incidents when boredom sets in.

The Dutch society in general responds calmly to the shelters, according to Daniel. External incidents from the outside world against the shelters happened less than internal incidents. After the attacks in Paris, the police did not notice any increase of external incidents. "We do not see an increase of Dutch people who focus their frustration on asylum seekers' shelters," he said.

If the IND decides that a person will not get asylum and he or she no longer has the right to stay in the Netherlands, the Dutch Repatriation and Departure Service (DT&V) will try to move him or her towards voluntary departure. Under the Dutch law, a person who repatriates voluntarily has the right to receive basic support. When the trajectory leads to involuntary leave, a person will not get this support. In the current incoming flow of refugees, there are quite some people who will not be granted a permit and thus have to go back.

"From the Syrian people who enter the Netherlands, around 92 percent are granted a permit," said Rhodia Maas, managing director of the DT&V. "We are instead focusing on the groups of people who 'hitchhike' on the enormous inflows of people. This can for example be Albanians, Kosovars, and people from African countries where life might not be as nice as in Western Europe, but where there is no reason to actually flee from," she added.

In the first ten months of 2015, a total of 2,562 people have left the Netherlands voluntarily and 1,494 left forcibly. Another 4,096 people who were within the trajectory have left the Netherlands or the place they used to reside in the country without informing the DT&V. "Next year, we expect 5,000 extra foreign nationals in our procedure," said Maas. Enditem